Reviews, Commentaries, and Discussions Centered Around the Medium of Video Games

5.10.2010

The High Price of Used Games Continues to Mount

If you're a long time reader of The Game Critic, you're no stranger to my constant reminders of how used game sales are in the long run hurting the industry. Well, today won't be any different. According to a spending report from Newzoo (click here for the Gamasutra report), a consumer survey group, almost half of all game sales (46%) in the United States are either used games or digital currency purchases. Now I won't say much here, this is just a quick update, but I will ask that you dear reader take some time to think about the numbers there. While that percentage does include digital currency sales such as DLC content and subscription fees (which World of Warcraft may be heavily contributing to), we also must realize that publishers take a large portion of the game sales profit. We may actually now be experiencing the first steps of a market in which used sales conjure more money then normal game sales, none of which makes it back to the developer. Sales of video games may be on the rise (as always they have for quite a while now), but I have to wonder at what point actual revenue of game developers will begin declining (some have already claimed to have been hurt by this) to the point where major studios begin closing their doors or shortchanging their products in order to make up for lost sales. Just remember, when you save that $5 on a used game, you cost the development team more than $20. I don't want to say that you might as well pirate, but you $5 save means that your favorite studio gets nothing off of that sale.

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Beyond the Controller originally started as a rant blog, the kind where various idiosyncrasies or crazy elements of the game industry could be analyzed or just plain abused. As time has gone on, the site has evolved and now exist to function as a deeper look at games. We review games, we talk about them, we have fun with them, but we also want to look into what makes them tick.